Toyota could face criminal prosecution in US

• Grand jury subpoena adds to Japanese carmaker's woes over recalls
• Congressional committee accuses firm of misleading the public
• Man jailed for killing three people in 70mph crash could face retrial

The scale of the Toyota recall crisis could even hit the wider Japanese economy as its forecast for exports is downgraded. Photograph: David Sillitoe
David Sillitoe/Guardian

The Toyota crisis deepened further after the beleaguered carmaker admitted it had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury, and a congressional committee accused it of misleading the public.

Toyota revealed last night that it received a federal grand jury subpoena from the US attorney's office for the southern district of New York this month.

The subpoena demanded that Toyota and its subsidiaries "produce certain documents related to unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles and the braking system of the Prius". This raises the possibility that the Japanese company could face criminal prosecution in America, and potentially huge fines, over safety problems with several of its models.

Toyota also announced that it has received a separate subpoena from the Los Angeles office of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC wants to see "certain documents including those related to unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles and the company's disclosure policies and practices".

These latest developments come as several top Toyota executives prepare to testify before US politicians. The hearings will begin later today when the president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, Jim Lentz, appears before the House committee on energy and commerce.

This committee has already ratcheted up the pressure on Lentz, in a letter yesterday which accused the company of:

• failing to investigate reports of unintended acceleration dating back to 2000

• rushing out the results of a flawed investigation into the problem of unintended acceleration this month, after testing just six cars

• telling the public that "sticky" pedals were to blame for most of the incidents of unintended acceleration, even though this was contradicted by its own internal data.

"Our preliminary assessment is that Toyota resisted the possibility that electronic defects could cause safety concerns, relied on a flawed engineering report, and made misleading public statements concerning the adequacy of recent recalls to address the risk of sudden, unintended acceleration," wrote committee chairman Henry Waxman.

The scale of the crisis could even hit Japan's economy. Today the Japanese government downgraded its forecast for exports in February to "increasing moderately" from "increasing" a month ago, partly due to "Japanese cars' recall issues". The cost of recalling millions of Toyota models is expected to cost the company at least $2bn.

The recalls could also lead to a retrial for a man jailed for causing a crash in which three people died. Koua Fong Lee had claimed that the brakes on his 1996 Toyota Camry had failed, causing him to crash into another vehicle at 70 miles an hour in 2006, killing three people. Lee was sentenced to eight years in 2007 after a US jury did not believe his story. Now, though, relatives of the victims believe he could be innocent.

"In my heart, the way I feel now, it wasn't his fault," Quincy Adams, who survived the accident, told ABC News.

Lee's attorney plans to ask a US judge to release his client ahead of a retrial.

"There was a terrible wrong done here, and there's an innocent man in prison. From the day this happened, he has always maintained that it was the car," said Brent Schafer.